Shop Windows to the Universe

These are two pictures of different sunspots. The picture on the left shows the whole Sun with some large sunspot groups on it. The sunspot groups in that picture are as big as the giant planet Jupiter. The picture on the right is a closeup of some other sunspots. The large sunspot near the middle of the righthand picture is bigger than Earth!
Click on image for full size Images courtesy SOHO (NASA & ESA) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Sunspots

Sunspots are dark, planet-sized regions
that appear on the "surface" of the Sun. Sunspots are "dark" because
they are colder than the areas around them. A large sunspot might have a
temperature of about 4,000 K (about 3,700° C or 6,700° F). This is much lower than
the 5,800 K (about 5,500° C or 10,000° F) temperature of the bright photosphere that surrounds the sunspots.

Sunspots are only dark in contrast to the bright face of the Sun. If you could
cut an average sunspot out of the Sun and place
it in the night sky, it would be about as bright as a full moon.
Sunspots have a lighter outer section called the penumbra, and a darker middle
region named the umbra.

Sunspots form over periods lasting from days to weeks, and can last for
weeks or even months. The average number of spots that can be seen
on the face of the Sun is not always the same, but goes up and down in a cycle. Historical
records of sunspot counts show that
this sunspot cycle has an average
period of about eleven years.

Our Sun isn't the only star with spots. Just recently, astronomers have
been able to detect "starspots" - "sunspots" on other stars.

Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!

Cool It! is the new card game from the Union of Concerned Scientists that teaches kids about the choices we have when it comes to climate change—and how policy and technology decisions made today will matter. Cool It! is available in our online store.

You might also be interested in:

Most of the energy we receive from the Sun is the visible (white) light emitted from the photosphere. The photosphere is one of the coolest regions of the Sun (6000 K), so only a small fraction (0.1%)...more

The Sun has a very large and very complex magnetic field. The magnetic field at an average place on the Sun is around 1 Gauss, about twice as strong as the average field on the surface of Earth (around...more

Sunspots are caused by very strong magnetic fields on the Sun. The best way to think about the very complicated process of sunspot formation is to think of magnetic "ropes" breaking through the visible...more

An active region on the Sun is an area with an especially strong magnetic field. Sunspots frequently form in active regions. Active regions appear bright in X-ray and ultraviolet images. Solar activity,...more

You may have heard of sunspots that sometimes dot the "surface" of the nearest star, our Sun. Well, other stars have spots too. They are called starspots and are relatively cool, dark regions on the visible...more

The Ulysses space probe has begun to investigate the Sun during solar maximum. Ulysses is now observing the South pole of the Sun. Ulysses has passed this way before, but during solar minimum. "Ulysses...more

Throughout the solar_cycle, the latitude of sunspot occurrence varies with an interesting pattern. The plot on the left shows the latitude of sunspot occurence versus time (in years). Sunspots are typically...more